What do smoke grenades, chicken feathers, cotton bolts and matchboxes have in common? They are all part of Cinthia Marcelle’s latest installation at the Modern Art Oxford, one of the UK’smost cutting-edge art space for international modern and contemporary visual art. Cinthia, arguably one Brazil’s notable contemporary artists, developed her installation Family in Disorder specifically for the upcoming exhibition in Oxford.

Inspired by social inequality around the world, Marcelle sought to produce a mirroring image of chaos and order by taking advantage of the architectural features at Modern Oxford: she placed identical black carpets in the museum’s Piper Gallery, where the carpet covered the entire floorspace, and the Upper Gallery, where the carpet failed to reach the perimeter of the room. Marcelle stacked the materials in the Piper Gallery in perfect order, spanning the entire width of the carpet and producing an image of structure with an impassable obstacle. She left the Upper Gallery’s installation to a group of six artists, providing them with the same amount of materials, giving them the freedom to build, dismantle and rebuild new structures. The resulting disorder of the artistic exchange in the Upper Gallery leaves a sense of impurity and confrontation. Marcelle’s installation is a response to the ongoing social inequality experienced around the globe, from her home country of Brazil to Oxford. The dismantling of structures within the Upper Gallery presents the efforts made in protests and movements to promote liberal values against patriarchal structures featured in the Piper Gallery.

The exhibition is presented alongside the premiere of her video Truth or Dare, taken during Marcelle’s residency in South Africa. Animated from photographs of a concrete triangle, the triangle presents a compass trying to find its magnetic field and failing to do so until met with a human shadow. It encompasses her message of confluence of our bodies, industrial objects and the environment.

CloudGuide is excited to present the Family in Disorder and Truth or Dare guides, available now on our App. The exciting installation, commissioned specifically for Modern Art Oxford, is on display until May 27!